Chapter 21 – "No Destination"
Twenty miles.
That's how far John Van Reap walked from the burned‑out corpse of Grim's compound.
Bare feet at first. Naked. Blood drying black on his skin. Smoke still clawing at the sky behind him.
If Grim was dead, good.
If he wasn't, John didn't care.
The cold never touched him. The night tried, but it failed. His breath stayed steady, body moving on instinct alone. Pain existed somewhere else now, filed away with everything he'd already lost.
By dawn, Concord City rose from the fog like a half‑remembered lie.
A mall sat in the center of it. Dead quiet. No walkers. No screams. Just glass, concrete, and echoes.
John slipped inside.
He found food first. Protein bars. Canned junk. Enough to last a week if he bothered rationing. Then clothes. A shirt. Pants. Jacket. Socks. Boots. He dressed without ceremony, like it meant nothing.
In a shuttered beauty store called Happy Hairs, he found scissors.
The mirror stared back at him as he worked. Hair fell in clumps to the floor. Months of grime, weeks of captivity, years of war stripped away with each careless cut.
When he was done, he looked up.
For half a second, he saw it.
The man he used to be.
Straight posture. Clear eyes. A face that hadn't learned how easy it was to kill.
A pure soul.
Then his right eye flickered red.
Just a blink. A reminder.
John scoffed and looked away.
He left the mall with a shank made from broken metal and bad intentions. No journal. No map. No plan worth trusting.
Atlanta crossed his mind.
New York, maybe.
Big cities. Big graves.
He chuckled softly at the thought, the sound thin and dry in his throat, and kept walking as the sun crept up behind him.
No destination.
No home.
Just a road and whatever hell waited at the end of it.
John Van Reap disappeared into the sunrise.